Generative design of stiffened plates based on homogenization method

Stiffened plates are widely used in aerospace structures as load-bearing components. In order to obtain a novel design of stiffened structures with excellent performance, a generative design method of stiffened plates (GDMSP) based on the homogenization method is proposed in this paper, which optimizes the stiffener layout based on an equivalent model. Then, the detailed model can then be obtained by extracting the stiffener path from the discrete distribution of stiffener angles. Moreover, the optimized design can be obtained by size optimization based on the detailed model. Two examples are used to illustrate the proposed framework, including the stiffness maximization of a rectangle stiffener plate and the buckling load maximization of a square stiffener plate. The optimized stiffener configurations are characterized by streamlines and uniform lines, respectively. For the first example, the stiffness of the stiffener design has an improvement of 17%. For the second example, the optimized design improves the buckling load by 35%. Results indicate that the proposed method can effectively provide a novel generative design for stiffened plates. Moreover, the obtained results have a clear stiffener path and have a noticeable improvement in performance, which can be directly used to establish a detailed model.